Would Clemson football fans rather play Notre Dame or South Carolina?
The 2020 Clemson football season, assuming that games are able to be played, is going to be one of the most interesting in history.
We’ve seen all kinds of things to this point, including many smaller football leagues cancel their fall season with the potential to moving it to the spring and both the Big Ten and Pac-12 announce that they would only play in-conference games during the fall 2020 season.
With things constantly changing, the entire 2020 Clemson football season has been throw up-in-the-air. The ACC is expected to follow the lead of the SEC as the conferences seek to find the best option to play the season.
At this point, both the ACC and SEC have expressed the desire of keeping their non-conference rivalry match-ups (Clemson-South Carolina, Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, and Louisville-Kentucky), but the ACC has also said that it will help Notre Dame out by giving the Fighting Irish games as part of the season, should everything going to ‘in-conference only.’
William Qualkinbush and Kelly Gramlich, Co-Hosts of Out of Bounds on The Roar (Clemson’s Flagship Radio Station), brought up an interesting discussion for Clemson football fans:
If things were to work out between the ACC and SEC to keep the non-conference games, the Tigers may very well have to drop the Notre Dame game to keep South Carolina.
Gramlich ran a poll on Twitter, which has received more than 1,500 votes, and the overarching consensus is that Clemson football fans would still rather play South Carolina than a game against Notre Dame.
Let's say Clemson can only play one of these teams this year... which one do you want to play? #OOB
— Kelly Gramlich (@kellygramlich) July 13, 2020
The case for both when it comes to Clemson football
It really depends on your perception when you look at the two games.
Notre Dame would give Clemson a quality win that could carry some clout should the Tigers need it for a CFB Playoff berth.
South Carolina is the in-state rivalry game that has been played every year for more than a century between two fan bases that simply can’t stand each other.
There’s no way that the Gamecocks will be ranked if the two teams squared off, but there’s just something about that rivalry game that makes it hard to pass up on if you were truly having to choose.